Australian English began to diverge from British English after the First Settlers, who set up the Colony of New South Wales, arrived in 1788. By 1820, their speech was recognised as being different from British English. Australian English arose from the intermingling of early settlers, who were from a great variety of mutually intelligible dialectal regions of Great Britain and Ireland, and quickly developed into a distinct variety of English[5] which differs considerably from most other varieties of English in vocabulary, accent, pronunciation, register, grammar and spelling.

The earliest form of Australian English was spoken by the children of the colonists in early New South Wales. This first generation of native-born children created a new dialect that was to become the language of the nation. The Australian-born children in the new colony were exposed to a wide range of dialects from all over the British Isles, in particular from Ireland and South East England.[6]

The native-born children in the colony created the new dialect from the speech they heard around them, and with it expressed peer solidarity. Even when new settlers arrived, this new dialect was strong enough to blunt other patterns of speech.

A quarter of the convicts were Irish. Many had been arrested in Ireland, and some in Great Britain. Many of the Irish spoke Irish and either no English at all, or spoke it poorly and rarely. There were other significant populations of convicts from non-English speaking parts of Britain, such as the Scottish Highlands and Wales.

Records from the early 19th century show this distinct dialect in the colonies after the first settlement in 1788.[5]Peter Miller Cunningham's 1827 book Two Years in New South Wales, described the distinctive accent and vocabulary of the native-born colonists, that differed from that of their parents and with a strong London influence.[6] Linguist Anthony Burgess considered that "Australian English may be thought of as a kind of fossilised Cockney of the Dickensian era."[7]

The first of the Australian gold rushes, in the 1850s, began a large wave of immigration, during which about two per cent of the population of the United Kingdom emigrated to the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria.[8] According to linguist Bruce Moore, "the major input of the various sounds that went into constructing the Australian accent was from south-east England".[6]

Some elements of Aboriginal languages have been adopted by Australian English—mainly as names for places, flora and fauna (for example dingo) and local culture. Many such are localised, and do not form part of general Australian use, while others, such as kangaroo, boomerang, budgerigar, wallaby and so on have become international. Other examples are cooee and hard yakka. The former is used as a high-pitched call, for attracting attention, (pronounced /ˈkʉːiː/) which travels long distances. Cooee is also a notional distance: if he's within cooee, we'll spot him. Hard yakka means hard work and is derived from yakka, from the Jagera/Yagara language once spoken in the Brisbane region.

Also of Aboriginal origin is the word bung, from the Sydney pidgin English (and ultimately from the Sydney Aboriginal language), meaning "dead", with some extension to "broken" or "useless". Many towns or suburbs of Australia have also been influenced or named after Aboriginal words. The best-known example is the capital, Canberra, named after a local Ngunnawal language word meaning "meeting place".[9]

Among the changes starting in the 19th century were the introduction of words, spellings, terms and usages from North American English. The words imported included some later considered to be typically Australian, such as bushwhacker and squatter.[10]

This American influence continued with the popularity of American films and the influx of American military personnel in World War II; seen in the enduring persistence of such terms as okay, you guys and gee.[11]

The most obvious way in which Australian English is distinctive from other varieties of English is through its unique pronunciation. It shares most similarity with New Zealand English.[12] Like most dialects of English it is distinguished primarily by its vowel phonology.[13]

The vowels of Australian English can be divided according to length. The long vowels, which include monophthongs and diphthongs, mostly correspond to the tense vowels used in analyses of Received Pronunciation (RP) as well as its centring diphthongs. The short vowels, consisting only of monophthongs, correspond to the RP lax vowels. There exist pairs of long and short vowels with overlapping vowel quality giving Australian English phonemic length distinction, which is unusual amongst the various dialects of English, though not unknown elsewhere, such as in regional south-eastern dialects of the UK and eastern seaboard dialects in the US.[15] As with New Zealand English, the weak-vowel merger is complete in Australian English: unstressed /ɪ/ is merged into /ə/ (schwa), unless it is followed by a velar consonant.

^The boundary between monophthongs and diphthongs is somewhat fluid, /ɪə/, for example, is commonly realised as [ɪː], particularly in closed syllables, though also found in open syllables such as we're, here, and so on. In open syllables particularly the pronunciation varies from the bisyllabic [ɪːɐ] though the diphthong [ɪə] to the long vowel [ɪː].

Australian English is non-rhotic; that is, the /r/ sound does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant. However, a linking /r/ can occur when a word that has a final <r> in the spelling comes before another word that starts with a vowel. An intrusive /r/ may similarly be inserted before a vowel in words that do not have <r> in the spelling in certain environments, namely after the long vowel /oː/ and after word final /ə/. This can be heard in "law-r-and order," where an intrusive R is voiced after the W and before the A.

Yod-dropping occurs after /s/, /z/ and, /θ/. Other cases of /sj/ and /zj/, along with /tj/ and /dj/, have coalesced to /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ respectively for many speakers. /j/ is generally retained in other consonant clusters.

Differences in stress, weak forms and standard pronunciation of isolated words occur between Australian English and other forms of English, which while noticeable do not impair intelligibility.

The affixes -ary, -ery, -ory, -bury, -berry and -mony (seen in words such as necessary, mulberry and matrimony) can be pronounced either with a full vowel or a schwa. Although some words like necessary are almost universally pronounced with the full vowel, older generations of Australians are relatively likely to pronounce these affixes with a schwa while younger generations are relatively likely to use a full vowel.

Words ending in unstressed -ile derived from Latin adjectives ending in -ilis are pronounced with a full vowel (/ɑɪl/), so that fertile rhymes with fur tile rather than turtle.

In addition, miscellaneous pronunciation differences exist when compared with other varieties of English in relation to seemingly random words. For example, as with American English, the vowel in yoghurt and the prefix homo- (as in homosexual or homophobic) is pronounced as /əʉ/ ("long o") rather than /ɔ/ ("short o"); vitamin, migraine and privacy are pronounced with /ɑɪ/ (as in mine) rather than /ɪ/, /iː/ and /ɪ/ respectively; the prefix paedo- (as in paedophile) is pronounced with /ɛ/ (as in red) rather than /iː/; urinal is pronounced with schwa/ə/ rather than /ɑɪ/ ("long i"); and harass and harassment are pronounced with the stress on the second, rather than the first syllable. As with British English, advertisement is pronounced with /ɪ/; tomato and vase are pronounced with /ɐː/ (as in father) instead of /æɪ/; zebra is pronounced with /ɛ/ (as in red) rather than /iː/; basil is pronounced with /æ/ ("short a") rather than /æɪ/ ("long a"); and buoy is pronounced as /boɪ/ (as in boy) rather than /ˈbʉːiː/. Examples of miscellaneous pronunciations which contrast with both standard American and British usages are data, which is pronounced with /ɐː/ ("dah") instead of /æɪ/ ("day"); and maroon (colour), pronounced with /əʉ/ ("own") as opposed to /ʉː/ ("oon").

Academic research has shown that the most notable variation within Australian English is largely sociocultural. This is mostly evident in phonology, which is divided into three sociocultural varieties: broad, general and cultivated.[18]

A limited range of word choices is strongly regional in nature. Consequently, the geographical background of individuals can be inferred, if they use words that are peculiar to particular Australian states or territories and, in some cases, even smaller regions.

The broad, general and cultivated accents form a continuum that reflects minute variations in the Australian accent. They can reflect the social class, education and urban or rural background of speakers, though such indicators are not always reliable.[19] According to linguists, the general Australian variant emerged some time before 1900.[20] Recent generations have seen a comparatively smaller proportion of the population speaking with the broad variant, along with the near extinction of the cultivated Australian accent.[21][22] The growth and dominance of general Australian accents perhaps reflects its prominence on radio and television during the late 20th century.

Australian Aboriginal English is made up of a range of forms which developed differently in different parts of Australia, and are said to vary along a continuum, from forms close to Standard Australian English to more non-standard forms. There are distinctive features of accent, grammar, words and meanings, as well as language use.

The ethnocultural dialects are diverse accents in Australian English that are spoken by the minority groups, which are of non-English speaking background.[23] A massive immigration from Asia has made a large increase in diversity and the will for people to show their cultural identity within the Australian context.[24] These ethnocultural varieties contain features of General Australian English as adopted by the children of immigrants blended with some non-English language features, such as Afro-Asiatic languages and languages of Asia.

Most regional differences are in word usage. Swimming clothes are known as cossies (pronounced "cozzies") or swimmers in New South Wales, togs in Queensland, and bathers in Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia.[25] What Queensland and New South Wales call a stroller is usually called a pram in Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania.[26] Preference for some synonymous words also differ between states. Garbage (i.e., garbage bin, garbage truck) dominates over rubbish in New South Wales and Queensland, while rubbish is more popular in Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia.[26] The word footy generally refers to the most popular football code in an area; that is, rugby league or rugby union depending on the local area, in most of New South Wales and Queensland, and Australian rules football elsewhere. Beer glasses are also named differently in different states. Distinctive grammatical patterns exist such as the use of the interrogative eh (also spelled ay or aye), which is particularly associated with Queensland. Tasmanian English has a unique stress on the English syllable 'schwa', denoted in IPA as [ə] (the e sound in 'herd'), in Tasmanian English it is typically stressed to [əː] or [ˈə][citation needed].

There are some notable regional variations in the pronunciations of certain words. The trap‑bath split is more complete in South Australia, which had later direct settlement from the British Isles than other parts of the country, which were settled while the trap-bath split was more substantially incomplete. Words such as dance, advance, plant, graph, example and answer are pronounced with /aː/ (as in father) far more frequently in South Australia while elsewhere in Australia the older /æ/ (as in mad) is more common.[26]L-vocalisation is also more common in South Australia than other states. In Western Australian and Queensland English, the vowels in near and square are typically realised as centring diphthongs ("nee-ya"), whereas in the other states they may also be realised as monophthongs.[27] A feature common in Victorian English is salary–celery merger, whereby a Victorian pronunciation of Ellen may sound like Alan and Victoria's capital city Melbourne may sound like Malbourne to speakers from other states. There is also regional variation in /uː/ before /l/ (as in school and pool).

Australian English has many words and idioms which are unique to the dialect and have been written on extensively, with the Macquarie Dictionary 4th Edition incorporating numerous Australian terms.[28]

Internationally well-known examples of Australian terminology include outback, meaning a remote, sparsely populated area, the bush, meaning either a native forest or a country area in general, and g'day, a greeting. Dinkum, or fair dinkum means "true" or "is that true?", among other things, depending on context and inflection.[29] The derivative dinky-di means "true" or devoted: a "dinky-di Aussie" is a "true Australian".

Australian English, in common with British English, uses the word mate.

Several words used by Australians were at one time used in the United Kingdom but have since fallen out of usage or changed in meaning there. For example, creek in Australia, as in North America, means a stream or small river, whereas in the UK it means a small watercourse flowing into the sea; paddock in Australia means field, whereas in the UK it means a small enclosure for livestock; bush or scrub in Australia, as in North America, means a wooded area, whereas in England they are commonly used only in proper names (such as Shepherd's Bush and Wormwood Scrubs).

Litotes, such as "not bad", "not much" and "you're not wrong", are also used, as are diminutives, which are commonly used and are often used to indicate familiarity. Some common examples are arvo (afternoon), barbie (barbecue), smoko (cigarette break), Aussie (Australian), Straya (Australia) and pressie (present/gift). This may also be done with people's names to create nicknames (other English speaking countries create similar diminutives). For example, "Gazza" from Gary, or "Smitty" from John Smith. The use of the suffix -o originates in Irish Gaelic[citation needed] (Irish ó), which is both a postclitic and a suffix with much the same meaning as in Australian English.

In informal speech, incomplete comparisons are sometimes used, such as "sweet as" (as in "That car is sweet as."). "Full", "fully" or "heaps" may precede a word to act as an intensifier (as in "The waves at the beach were heaps good."). This was more common in regional Australia and South Australia[when?] but has been in common usage in urban Australia for decades. The suffix "-ly" is sometimes omitted in broader Australian English. For instance, "really good" can become "real good".

Australia's switch to the metric system in the 1970s changed most of the country's vocabulary of measurement from imperial to metric measures.[30] Since the switch to metric, heights of individuals are listed in centimetres on official documents such as a driver's licence but many people understand and may speak of feet and inches.[31]

Gammon in both forms ostensibly refers to a cut of pork, but in British English slang it is synonymous with a middle aged redneck; in Australian English slang it is used to indicate irony or sarcasm.

Pants in Australian and US usage refers to UK trousers, but in British English refer to Australian English underpants

Public school in Australian and US usage refers to a state school. Australian (in common with US) English uses private school to mean a non-government or independent school, in contrast with British English which uses public school to refer to the same thing.

Pudding in Australian and US usage refers to a particular sweet dessert, while in British English it can refer to dessert (the food course) in general

Prawn in Australian English refers both to large and small crustaceans, while in British English it refers to large crustaceans (with small crustaceans referred to as shrimp) and in American English the term shrimp is used universally for large and small crustaceans

Thong in both US and UK usage refers Australian English G-string (underwear), while in Australian English it refers to US and UK flip-flop (footwear)

Vest in Australian and US usage refers to UK waistcoat but in British English refers to Australian English singlet

As with American English, but unlike British English, collective nouns are almost always singular in construction, e.g., the government was unable to decide as opposed to the government were unable to decide. Shan't, the negation of should as in I shan't be happy if ..., the use of haven't any instead of haven't got any and the use of don't let's in place of let's not, common in upper-register British English, are almost never encountered in Australian (or North American) English. River generally follows the name of the river in question as in North America, i.e., Darling River, rather than the British convention of coming before the name, e.g., River Thames. In South Australia however, the British convention applies—for example, the River Murray or the River Torrens. As with American English, on the weekend and studied medicine are used rather than the British at the weekend and read medicine. Similarly, around is more commonly used in constructions such as running around, stomping around or messing around in contrast with the British convention of using about.

In common with British English, the past tense and past participles of the verbs learn, spell and smell are often irregular (learnt, spelt, smelt). Similarly, in Australian usage, the to in I'll write to you is retained, as opposed to US usage where it may be dropped. While prepositions before days may be omitted in American English, i.e., She resigned Thursday, they are retained in Australian English, as in British English: She resigned on Thursday. Ranges of dates use to, i.e., Monday to Friday, as with British English, rather than Monday through Friday in American English. When saying or writing out numbers, and is inserted before the tens, i.e., one hundred and sixty-two, as with British practice. However Australians, like Americans, are more likely to pronounce numbers such as 1,200 as twelve hundred, rather than one thousand two hundred.[citation needed] When referring to time, Australians will refer to 10:30 as half past ten and do not use the British half ten. Similarly, a quarter to ten is used for 9:45 rather than the American (a) quarter of ten.

As in most English-speaking countries, there is no official governmental regulator or overseer of normative spelling and grammar. The Macquarie Dictionary is used by some universities and some other organisations as a standard for Australian English spelling. The Style Manual: For Authors, Editors and Printers, the Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage and the Australian Guide to Legal Citation are prominent style guides.

Australian spelling is closer to British than American spelling. As with British spelling, the u is retained in words such as colour, honour, labour and favour. While the Macquarie Dictionary lists the -our ending and follows it with the -or ending as an acceptable variant, the latter is rarely found in actual use today. Australian print media, including digital media, today strongly favour -our endings. A notable exception to this rule is the Australian Labor Party, which officially adopted the -or spelling in its name in 1912, after a period where both spellings seem to have been used indiscriminately (some sources have attributed the official decision for the party to use the American spelling to King O'Malley, who was born in the United States and was reputedly an advocate of spelling reform; the spelling without a ⟨u⟩ is the standard form in American English.[34][35] It has been suggested that the adoption of the spelling without a ⟨u⟩ "signified one of the ALP's earliest attempts at modernisation", and served the purpose of differentiating the party from the Australian labour movement as a whole and distinguishing it from other British Empire labour parties). Consistent with British spellings, -re, rather than -er, is the only listed variant in Australian dictionaries in words such as theatre, centre and manoeuvre. Unlike British English, which is split between -ise and -ize in words such as organise and realise, with -ize favoured by the Oxford English Dictionary and -ise listed as a variant, -ize is rare in Australian English and designated as a variant by the Macquarie Dictionary. Ae and oe are often maintained in words such as manoeuvre and paedophilia (excepting those listed below); however, the Macquarie Dictionary lists forms with e (e.g., pedophilia) as acceptable variants and notes a tendency within Australian English towards using only e.

Individual words where the preferred spelling is listed by the Macquarie Dictionary as being different from the British spellings include "program" (in all contexts) as opposed to "programme", "analog" (antonym of "digital") as opposed to "analogue", "livable" as opposed to "liveable", "guerilla" as opposed to "guerrilla", "verandah" as opposed to "veranda", "burqa" as opposed to "burka", "pastie" (food) as opposed to "pasty".[28][36][37] Unspaced forms such as "onto", "anytime", "alright" and "anymore" are also listed as being as acceptable as their spaced counterparts.[28]

Different spellings have existed throughout Australia's history. A pamphlet entitled The So-Called "American Spelling", published in Sydney some time in the 19th century, argued that "there is no valid etymological reason for the preservation of the u in such words as honor, labor, etc."[38] The pamphlet also claimed that "the tendency of people in Australasia is to excise the u, and one of the Sydney morning papers habitually does this, while the other generally follows the older form." What are today regarded as American spellings were popular in Australia throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the Victorian Department of Education endorsing them into the 1970s and The Age newspaper until the 1990s. This influence can be seen in the spelling of the Australian Labor Party and also in some place names such as Victor Harbor. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary has been attributed with re-establishing the dominance of the British spellings in the 1920s and 1930s.[39] For a short time during the late 20th century, Harry Lindgren's 1969 spelling reform proposal (Spelling Reform 1 or SR1) gained some support in Australia: in 1975, the Australian Teachers' Federation adopted SR1 as a policy.[40] SR1 calls for the short /e/ sound (as in bet) to be spelt with E (for example friend→frend, head→hed).

There are two major English language keyboard layouts, the United States layout and the United Kingdom layout. Keyboards and keyboard software for the Australian market universally use the United States keyboard layout, which lacks pound sterling, Euro currency and negation symbols. Punctuation symbols are also placed differently from British keyboards.